


Quirky

by BrownieFox



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-10-25 11:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10763673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrownieFox/pseuds/BrownieFox
Summary: They all had special abilities - and that was normal.In which the cast of Fullmetal Alchemist have quirks.





	1. Chapter 1

**Edward Elric**

 

When Ed was three, it was nearly impossible to remove him from the walls.

An early bloomer as far as quirks went, as soon as the little boy realized certain parts of him had a habit of sticking to surfaces, he took every chance he had to test it out. As far as his parents could tell, it was mostly his hands, feet, elbows, and knees that stuck to things. More than once they’d find him hanging from the ceiling. He was a menace when it came to hiding things in cupboards.

After Ed lost his arm and leg, not only was it hard to climb a ninety-degree angle with only two limbs, but the automail limbs almost made it even harder. But Ed had already accepted that because of the grave error he had made, he had lost many important things to him. As long as he got Al’s body back, he would be able to live without absolutely anything that had been taken from him.

After the promise day, when he got his other arm back, it took him a sad amount of time to realize that this meant he’d be able to use his quirk again. It was only after Winry had come at him with a wrench about his still-automail leg that he tried to scurry up the wall to get away. And he was almost surprised when both of his hands found purchase on the wall.

(Shortly after he still got nailed in the head with the wrench. It would seem no matter where he’d climb, Winry’s quirk of accurate throw always won.)

 

**Alphonse Elric**

 

Alphonse didn’t learn about his quirk until Trisha was nearly dead.

The two of them had made her a flower crown, a common thing in those terrible days, and Trisha had reached to take it from Ed, to touch a finger to them and use her quirk on the rings, but she was struggling and both boys hated to see her struggle. Alphonse had grabbed it to put on her head, but as his hands made contact with it there was a brief flash and the crown gained a shininess to it, as if it were covered in a thin layer of glass. 

“Oh, Al, your quirk,” Trisha had smiled sadly, tiredly, as Alphonse put the crown upon her head with shaking hands. “You inherited it from me.”

Stasis, Trisha’s - and now Alphonse’s - quirk, was a strange thing. A single touch to an item, and it would stop. It would be frozen where it was. A flower would never wilt, a ball would stay frozen in the air until somebody moved it. After that day, Al tried time and again to do just that with their mother. But not only was his control over his quirk not good enough, but Trisha herself didn’t want Al to do that to her. She’d placed a hand on his cheek, wiping away a tear as he failed to save her once again, and told him that she didn’t want him to ever use stasis on a human being.

After Trisha died, Alphonse practiced stasis often, and had begun to get quite good at it - until they attempted human transmutation. With his body he lost his quirk. 

Both of the boys were essentially quirkless.

 

**Roy Mustang**

 

Roy Mustang liked having an upper hand. A good way to secure one was to surprise people.

This was why Roy had become so devoted to flame alchemy. He was determined to master it, to utilize it, for that to be his area of expertise so that people would be surprised when he actually used his quirk. At first, flame alchemy was to be the secondary ability of his, though the one the public would see more. And yet, as time went on and he went to Ishval and fought in battle after battle, he steadily found that his first reaction to unsettling things was to ready his fingers to snap instead of whistling.

Eventually, Roy seemed to nearly forget he had a quirk at all. A wet glove meant he was down for the count. The transmutation circle being broken meant that he’d have to draw a new one or rely on Riza for a moment.

But on some nights, when he couldn’t sleep because the nightmares were too bad, he’d sit by the window and whistle a soft, meaningless tune as pictures of frost would curl on the glass.

(He’d wonder if burning in an inferno was a better death than freezing in a glacier for the Ishvalans.)

 

**Riza Hawkeye**

 

Many people would try and guess at her quirk.

Zoom vision, never-failing aim, perhaps the ability to make a never-ending supply of guns or ammo.

Riza would let them guess until they were out of breath and their faces were blue, but would never tell. There was only one person alive she’d willingly given the information to, and she’d like to keep it that way.

After her team was split up all across Amestris, she found herself using it more than ever.

Jean Havoc: alive, safe

Roy Mustang: alive, safe

Heymans Breda: alive, in danger

Kain Fuery: alive, in peril

Vaton Falman: alive, safe

She took comfort in them, in the alives that passed through her mind at the thought of their names, how she had the urge to turn in one direction or another, the direction in which they lied, ready to act when the time came again. Riza could still see in her mind their eyes when she had first looked into them and decided she would add them to those she tracked.

Riza screamed when on the Promise Day, Roy’s presence winked out completely. Not dead, but gone as if he had never existed.

 

**Jean Havoc**

 

His was told his entire life that, with a quirk like his, he was bound to join the military.

Jean had often replied that, which a country based so much on military, so would most other people in the classroom.

Nonetheless, this didn’t mean that they were wrong. A quirk like ‘weapon touch’ wasn’t meant for a chef. So after his schooling Jean followed his fate and picked up his first pistol. He’d held a rifle before, the reason he’d ever found out about his quirk, but the pistol was the second time he’d felt his quirk in action. The blueprints of the weapon filled his mind as his hand shifted its position on the gun into the correct hold. 

His superiors seemed to find this quirk interesting, even ‘fun’ as they passed him guns and had him touch tanks just to see if he’d be able to drive them better than those trained to do so. However, a quirk only got you so far rank-wise, and so while he was viewed as interesting he wasn’t viewed as worthwhile, because he could hold a gun but practiced marksmen could do that too, and they often shot more accurate than him.

Mustang saw Jean as a person, and he was one of the first since he’d joined the military to do so (Breda being the first). He was Jean’s worth, and so Jean joined the man in his crazy goal to be Fuhrer. He seemed practically over joyed when Jean touched his glove and didn’t understand how to use the circle on the back.

After Jean’s spinal cord was damaged, he’d hold the items in the general store grimly. With a quirk like his, he was meant to be in the military.

(When Jean picked up the phone around the time of the Promised Day and had an intimate knowledge of it, he’d grinned. Honestly, anything could be a weapon in the right hands.)

 

**Heymans Breda**

 

Like Havoc, Breda’s quirk was often the first and only thing they knew about him.

His quirk was used to define him, and he was essentially thrown into the military. He’d sigh as others remarked that he was smarter than he looked, smarter than a quirk like his let on. One would think, in this day and age, people would realize than quirks weren’t everything. They were like an eye or an ear or an arm. Part of somebody, but everybody had them so that didn’t really make them very interesting.

Of course, it wasn’t like Breda didn’t like to use his quirk. How nice it was, to have somebody try and punch him only to find their fist come in contact with the suddenly stoney surface of that was his skin.

 

**Vato Falman**

 

Falman often got compliments on his quirk.

How amazing, the amount of information he was able to retain. It was one of the best uses of a memory quirk they’d seen. He put several others to shame with his ability.

And he’d smile, and he’d thank them.

Because it wasn’t their fault that they hadn’t been told he didn’t have a quirk.

Falman was born with an amazing memory, but that memory was very much not a quirk. Not that that made much of a difference in Central. There, intelligence was important as the fighting was more intellectual than physical in some fields. And that was where Mustang had utilized him.

But then he got shipped off to Briggs.

Briggs, the hardest, coldest place in all of Amestris where only the strong survive. Falman thought that, surely, without a quirk he’d be looked down upon. Only the best of the best - and those who weren’t meant to live long - got sent down the the giant wall.

But when Falman actually got there, he found that quirks weren’t important to the Briggs men. Many had quirks that didn’t ‘suit’ military or weren’t meant for the climate they currently resided in, but that didn’t stop them from being there.

Still, it was only after Falman’s first run-in with Buccaneer that he realized he really didn’t have anything to worry about. The man had asked about his quirk, and Falman had answered lamely that he didn’t have one and would probably be better somewhere else. The man had laughed, a big hearty laugh, and replied that such a thing had never stopped him from defending the border.

 

**Kain Fuery**

 

Fuery was on the front lines of a war. He didn’t have time to use his quirk.

And yet he made time.

At night, when he has actually in a camp and not in the trenches, he would close his eyes. Even just that was dangerous when the enemy may attack at any given moment, but he still would. And then he would stop paying attention to his surroundings. And he’d listen. He’d strain his ears until the sound of snores was a distant memory, until the gunshots of those still fighting faded into the distance. At some point, he’d only been able to reach the edge of camps. Then he reached the towns miles away. Night after night, he’d sacrifice time he could be resting and sleeping to focusing, using his quirk more than he ever had as he heard the trains rumbling across the tracks.

He’d sobbed for hours when he realized the scratching he was hearing was Mustang’s pen on paper after somebody came in and addressed him as such. He’d smiled sadly as he heard Havoc making his way around his general store in his wheelchair, answering the phone with a deep sigh. He’d laughed with Vato as the Briggs men gathered around for a drink.

And he was the first to find out what Mustang was planning and abandoned his position long before the message reached him.

 

**Olivier Armstrong**

 

Quirks were useful in their own right, but Olivier had never understood why people always put so much stock into them.

What use was a quirk if the man who held it had no spine?

Only those who survived could belong in Briggs, and no fancy quirks could save you forever from the harsh climate. So while to some being sent to Briggs was a sign of your career ending, others took to it with vigor. For once their position wasn’t low because they were able to talk to animals as compared to the man who could create minature explosions. Here, they had a chance to be a person and not a quirk to be used by the military.

Olivier was confident enough in herself to admit that such an system was, possibly, influenced the slightest by her own quirk.

Like everything else about the Armstrong’s, it had been passed through them for generations. Every offspring of the family had the same quirk, regardless of whatever quirk their spouse had. 

Every Armstrong could create sparkles.

Of all the siblings, Alex utilized it the most, usually to held show off his muscles. The quirk could be used as a distraction, enough sparkles could blind people, and with enough concentration the sparkles were even solid and could do some damage.

Olivier hadn’t actively used her quirk in years.

(though she’d be lying if the said she didn’t use it on occasion when he hair was falling just right.)

 

**Miles**

 

Miles, like Olivier, had a family quirk.

He got his from his mother, who got it from her father, who got it from his father.

He was often told he’d be of more use in the desert, or perhaps even working under Mustang.

Miles never listened. Briggs was where he belonged.

To Hell with his burn-proof quirk.

 

**Ling Yao**

 

There was an actual reason for Ling’s squinty-eyed-ness.

Sure, there was the fact that he was Xingese so it was actual a part of his facial expression. But it also hurt to open his eyes in broad daylight.

In the night, now that was his time to shine.

He’d open his eyes up more than ever, and take in the brilliant colors of the world. How often he’d snuck around the Yao clan territory in the twilight hours, looking over her people when his sight was at its peak, the shadows far more lit up to him than they were to anybody else.

Greed, for whatever reason, didn’t seem able to use Ling’s night-vision quirk, which worked out well for the prince, as it meant he got a little bit more time to control his body.

Sometimes, Ling thought that Lanfan was a little - dare he say it - jealous of his quirk. She was his bodyguard, and yet he could move through the shadows with more sureness than she. Of course, Lanfan had always felt insecure quirk-wise - being the quirkless child in a family with a history amazing quirks would do that to somebody.

But Ling would have nobody else protecting him. He’d never choose anybody else to be by his side. And just as she would give her life for Ling, Ling relished the not-so-secret fact that he would do the same for her in a heartbeat.

 

**Mei Chang**

 

In all honesty, Mei wasn’t really sure she had a quirk.

One of the reasons that the Change family was so looked down upon was because they were overrun with quirkless individuals. Mei had never been bothered by this fact, but it did put some confusion to whether or not she had one.

But eventually she decided that yes, she must have one. After all, nobody ever seemed to talk about the colors that surrounded people. So that must’ve been her quirk. 

She’d heard the word aura a long time ago, and had decided that that must’ve been it. She was seeing people’s aura’s. Which, again, put into question whether or not seeing aura’s was considered a quirk or just an ability. And after years and years of debating this fact over, she’d decided that really it didn’t matter, and if anybody cared then they weren’t worth it.

When Mei had first met Alphonse, she had been a bit confused. How could one’s aura stem entirely from a place on their neck? And she’d been even more confused upon meeting Ling. Ling of the Yao clan, her enemy in many ways. How could he have such a nice aura?

 

**Scar**

 

Scar’s quirk was useful for soothing others.

That’s what he had been told years ago.

To see what haunts people, what good use it could be put to.

Scar had laughed at the ridiculousness of such a statement years later.

It was so easy to spot a State Alchemist, especially those who had severed in the Ishval Massacre. They were always surrounded by the hauntings of those they had murdered out there, those they had mowed down without any regard to their lives.

The Flame Alchemist walked with burned memories of people following him, reaching for him. Some seemed angry - they had every right to be - but some almost seemed sad for the man. It didn’t make any sense to Scar.

The Fullmetal Alchemist, now there was a strange one. 

Two people followed behind him and his brother. One was a little girl and her giant, white dog. She clung to the boys and seemed to be begging them for something. To die so young… Scar was reminded that it was a child’s death that started the Ishval War.

The second was a woman had the same nose as the alchemist and she was always smiling. She looked ready to cry whenever he started to fight. And one day, on the meeting when they have a run in with Rockbell girl, the woman is gone.

It is during this meeting that, for the first time, Scar looks behind him.

None of the alchemists he’d killed haunt him.

Instead, his brother smiles at him with the same sadness of the woman.

 

**Van Hohenheim**

 

For the most part, slaves were only those who were quirkless.

After all, without a quirk how else could they possibly contribute to society? What use were they?

And so quirkless married quirkless and families would stay slaves until genes deemed it time to supply a generation with a quirk that would allow them a chance at a different life.

Hohenheim was not one of those who made it out with a quirk. Even as an immortal being, he had always been quirkless and would be until the day he died. At least one good thing came out of it: because of Van’s blood, the Dwarf in the Flask was quirkless too, and that was one thing that he was unable to use in his plot against humans.

After Hohenheim and Trisha had a kid, and Edward started climbing the walls like a giant spider, Hohenheim had cried. 

Because this wall-climbing was no quirk that anybody in Trisha’s family had ever had.

It meant that, even if he had never met the Dwarf in the Flask and had stayed a slave, then there was a chance that if he’d ever had a son in Xerxes, they would’ve had a quirk. They wouldn’t have been a slave like him. They would’ve made it out.


	2. PTSD and Helplessness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just a quick quirky edwin snapshot from after the promised day

Winry awoke to a cold bed.

She frowned, rolling over to her other side, closer to where Ed was supposed to be. There was no one there. With a sigh the engineer threw of the blankets. It was one of those nights.

It took her a while, but she found him on the balcony. Well, above the balcony. He was on the 'A' of 'Automail', hands and elbows and single foot securely on the side of the house. His automail leg was off. It lay on the balcony floor, lifeless, and his stump of flesh dangled uselessly beneath him. She'd seen him do this before, barely awake, stripping off the leg in a panic. She wasn't surprised.

"Ed?"

His eyes had been fixed on the horizon, but at his name the boy looked down at her. His eyes seemed to reflect the moonlight, an unsettling and eerie gold, His chest moved in great heaving gasps, as if all the oxygen in the world wasn't enough to sustain him. At least in meant he couldn't've been out here for too long. For a moment they just stared at each other, Ed on guard and not quite recognizing her, and Winry patient and understanding. Waiting.

And then Ed seemed to come to himself, wake up at least a little more from whatever nightmare had him in its grasp. He drew in a shuddering breath, his head, hanging as if in defeat, and he made his way back off of the wall. Winry let him grab her arm to steady himself on his single leg. There would be time to reconnect the automail in the morning, but not here, and not now. 

She noticed the sudden, jolting movements of his right arm as they made their way back to the bed. How it moved in sudden, almost sporadic bursts, as if he was used to putting so much more force into his shoulder to lift his arm. During the day time, he was so much better with it, but during times like these...

Edward climbed into their bed and wrapped himself thoroughly in the blankets, staring at the wall with dead, glazed eyes. Winry knew from experience that it would be hours before he managed to conquer his dreams enough to sleep again. It was something he could only do on his own. Winry left him to it, going downstairs and to the front porch. When Ed had had the first on these - episodes? Nightmares? Panic attacks? - Winry had found him nearly on the ceiling of their room. She'd frantically called Al, who had luckily been awake researching at the time. Alphonse had managed to calm her down and explained that he should've warned her. During the years he and his brother had traveled together, there had been times when Ed would wake up as she had described. Usually he'd scramble at the wall for while, but when his automail hand found no purchase he'd curl up on his bed, clutching his leg.

Winry looked up at the sky. The moon was bright tonight, but clouds were rolling in. It would surely start to rain before morning.

The engineer hefted a wrench she had grabbed in her hand. The weight was familiar. Comforting. She ran her thumb over the smooth, cool metal.

She threw it.

The wrench sailed through the air accompanied by a scream she hoped Ed was too out of it to hear.

She fell to her knees with a sob.

Automail was her passion, what she had devoted her life to. Her quirk hadn't factored into her preferred future. What good was a quirk where she could hit anything in range with any object she threw when she was working with metal close up? For years she'd only ever really used it to hit Edward with wrenches. But maybe, maybe if she'd excersized her quirk and utilized it, had been there more for Ed and helped him fight his demons when they were real and in front of him, he wouldn't be so fractured. She cried out at how useless she was, then and now, for her husband.


	3. Maes Hughes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By request, a quirk for Hughes

"Stomp stomp stomp~" 

Elicia sang the words, hopping down the stairs.

"Elicia, stop that." Gracia scolded her daughter, waggling her finger. Elicia walked the rest of the way down, but she giggled as she stared at green lights that zipped through her, originating in her feet and traveling upward across her skin. Once Elicia was at the table Gracia turned back to the stove where she was portraying dinner, but she didn't have long to wait until there was more feet slamming down on the wooden boards. Gracia sighed. Ever since Elicia had found out about her quirk, she had done nothing but stomp around the house. "Please, Elicia, honey, could you stop that?"

"Sorry dear." She really shouldn't have been that surprised to find her own husband, halted on the on the stairs with his own blue sparks worming their way upwards. After all, Elicia had to have picked up the habit somewhere.

"Honey, please don't encourage her." Gracia sighed and Hughes at least had the decency to look a little bit ashamed.

oOo

When Hughes was younger, his quirk had been admired by his classmates, thought to be so cool. All he had to do was stomp his feet and he was the life of the party, lighting up a dark room and becoming the center of attention. It was only when he got older that they all seemed to realize just how useless a quirk like that was. When, pray tell, would one need to use it after they stopped being afraid of the dark? The answer was never. They'd never use it. And the fact was that Amestris looked at quirks a lot. It was rare to find anybody in the a high position that had a useless quirk. 

But Maes, oh, Maes was determined.

He studied, he excersized, he trained, because there was a problem with the system. The older he got, the more Maes understood that and the more sure he grew that this issue could only be fixed from the inside. And once he was inside, he climbed as far as he could, and when he could go no farther he found someone with the drive and the quirk to take them to the top, put that person on his shoulders, and allowed them to use him as a stone to build their up their tower.

Before he died, Maes never found a good use for his quirk.

oOo

"Alright, this way." *stomp stomp stomp* "What do you think about right here."

A grown woman turned to a man who looked up at the wall of the tunnel, a hand on his chin as he judged it. 

"Hm. Seems pretty good." 

He placed a hand on the spot before punching it. The rock split, carving out a nice square cavern that the two stepped into, the woman stomping her way in, lighting up their way with the green lights she created, glowing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's right people, elicia and maes and light-up sketchers.  
> I'm not really sure exactly what's going on at the end there, but the idea sort of is that when Elicia grows up she uses their quirk as a way to help explore the tunnels created by sloth without using a lamp to light the way, this way they don't use extra oxygen when they go into more of the worse-off off-shoot tunnels. I don't really know what they're doing down there though. Creating underground homes? Find water in the tunnels near the desert? Finding precious metals and gems? idk, i wrote this super quick


	4. The Dynasty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was reminded about my ideas for how quirks are viewed in Xing, so I quickly jotted them down.

A quirk is a gift from the gods.

The gods looked down on mortals and realized that they suffered from the plight of being helpless and fragile things, and so they placed quirks into people to allow them to live better lives. Of course, only those worthy of quirks had them.

But the Emperor, oh, the Emperor was gifted with a quirk. The gods smiled down on the Emperor and gifted him with a quirk to guide his people. If the quirk was a powerful one that had offensive capabilities, then it must mean that the dynasty is destined to seek to further themselves, starting wars. If the Emperor has a softer quirk, a quirk that helped others or didn't do much of anything, then the gods wanted the dynasty to focus inwards on its people and the current needs.

At least, that's what the people said. 

May wasn't sure whether she believed that. But, then again, she wasn't sure how much anybody really believed it. It just seemed to be the way that things were. It was their life and their story and who was she, a princess of the Chang clan, to challenge that?

For many generations, The Emperor Quirk had been what determined whether one was fit for the crown or not. It went like this: if you had the quirk, then that meant you were a true child of the emperor and thus stood a chance, and if you didn't then your chances were greatly diminished. And for just as long, this way of thinking had caused the death of many princes and princesses.

For you see, The Emperor Quirk was rejuvenation. The emperor could cut off any limb and it would grow back. It had been common practice for so long that when an heir reached their eighth birthday, they would attempt to do just that if they were still uncertain of their quirk, sometimes even if they knew what their quirk was. It was possible, if one had a powerful alkahestris on hand right away, to reconnect the limb if done soon enough, but it was viewed as a cowards way. One must commit for the throne if one desired it. 

May could remember the old woman, the Chang princess before her, creating bubbles out of thin air using her quirk. And May remembered the right sleeve of the princess's dresses falling to her side, empty. 

May had never had any plan to do such a thing. She was a Chang, she wouldn't get the throne no matter what quirk she had. 

But what the emperor revealed that the gods had spoken to him, saying that it was time for the throne to have new blood, a new quirk, a new blessing, there was hope. Hope to not die. As he told his children on the rare occasion they were all together (a festivity of the first quirk in Xing being found) that he desired more than his quirk. True, he could not die from losing a limb, but now he longed to live forever. And he would give anything for that ability.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so here's a list of the quirks:
> 
> Hohenheim/Father - none  
> Edward Elric - climbing  
> Alphonse Elric - Stasis  
> Trisha Elric - Stasis  
> Winry Rockbell - accurate throw  
> Lanfan - none  
> Ling Yao - night vision  
> Roy Mustang - freezing  
> Riza Hawkeye - tracking  
> Mei Chang - aura reading  
> Scar - see what haunts people  
> Olivier Armstrong - summon sparkles  
> Alex Armstrong - summon sparkles  
> Jean Havoc - weapon touch  
> Heymans Breda - touch skin  
> Vato Falman - none  
> Kain Fuery - distance hearing  
> Buccaneer - none  
> Miles - unable to be burned  
> Maes Hughes - light-up   
> Elicia Hughes - light-up
> 
> just sort of an Idea i've had for a bit and worked on. I hope you liked it :)  
> If you have any questions or requests for quirks of other characters, feel free to voice them :D


End file.
